U.N. INVOLVEMENT IN IRAQ WILL ONLY HELP IF U.S. CHANGES OCCUPATION
POLICY

Salim Lone was spokesman in Baghdad for the late
U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

By Salim Lone

Once again, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is under
pressure from the United States to have his organization play a pivotal
role in helping resolve a crisis that shows no sign of abating. But once
again, what is really being sought is U.N. support for the Bush administration's
failing occupation policy, which is now being publicly challenged by Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading and immensely powerful cleric of the
Shiite majority in Iraq.

This new drive for involving the United Nations, which
the Bush administration has repeatedly sidelined, is emblematic of the
constant reversals that have marked U.S. policy as it continues to try,
unfathomably, to exercise complete control over developments in a country
it hardly understands. Vital though U.N. involvement is in healing the
deep wounds inflicted by this continuing war on both Iraq and much of
the Islamic world, what is infinitely more important is for the United
States to have a coherent policy designed to hand over both political
and military control to the Iraqis themselves as soon as possible.

That this major crisis has occurred with Sistani reflects
yet again the astonishing isolation of Paul Bremer's team from Iraqi political
and social realities. It is Sistani's implicit support for the American
occupation that has been instrumental in restraining a Shiite revolt,
but this support has from the beginning been explicitly predicated on
speedy elections, which will end a century of marginalization of the Shiite
majority in Iraq.

When the Nov. 15 agreement between the United States and the Iraqi Governing
Council indicated that the handover to a new Iraqi body would be based
on caucuses -- a novelty not only for Arabs but also most non-Iowans!
-- Sistani immediately indicated that this was not acceptable and that
elections were essential for the legitimacy of the new government.

Astonishingly, this powerful cleric's concern was in
essence politely ignored. So he has now added an even tougher demand --
that any decision on asking the coalition forces to stay on in Iraq after
the handover can only be taken by an elected body.

Hence the startling American return to the United Nations.
Indeed, in the U.S. document for the June 30 handover agreed upon by the
U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, no role was envisaged for the
United Nations.

For all three parties now, the United Nations is considered
essential to providing legitimacy for the new Iraqi government being formed.
But there are real divisions here. Sistani wants the United Nations to
certify that the elective process was genuinely democratic. Annan recently
told the Iraqi Governing Council that he recognizes that "there may
not be time to organize free, fair and credible elections" by June
30. But he also told the council that the process of forming the government
must be "conducted in a way that is fully inclusive and transparent.
Every segment of Iraqi society should feel represented in the nascent
institutions of their country."

These will be tough bars for the coalition to meet, but in any event certification
of the process' legitimacy would require U.N. monitoring it in all of
Iraq. That in turn would require a highly political U.N. return to Iraq.

Annan, still deeply troubled by the devastating loss
of his representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and 24 other U.N. staff members
killed in July and August by Iraqi insurgents, and conscious as well of
the growing perception in the Islamic world that the United Nations is
essentially doing U.S. bidding, has explicitly laid down non-negotiable
conditions for a return before sovereignty is restored to the country.
A guarantee of security for staff is one, but no less important is the
requirement that the responsibilities and authority that would be given
the United Nations "be commensurate with the high risks that it continues
to face."

The United Nations has an enormous reservoir of knowledge
about Iraq and also in helping emergent states conduct free elections,
write constitutions and create mechanisms for promoting and protecting
human rights -- all urgent priorities for Iraq. The United States is wise
to have recognized at least some of the U.N.'s utility, but there is much
it needs to do to get Iraq right.

It is naïve, for example, to believe that this June
30 handover will inoculate the Bush administration's own electoral campaign
against Iraqi turmoil, since there is little likelihood that that day
will suddenly bring about a serious drop in the insurgent attacks; indeed,
few Iraqis and Arabs will take that day to be the end of occupation since
there will be tens of thousands of coalition troops there still. The United
States should therefore keep open the option for postponing the handover
for a month or two as it negotiates Sistani's demands.

More importantly, the dramatic political capital the
United States won with Saddam Hussein's capture -- and with the startling
renunciation of weapons of mass destruction by Libya and the agreements
on Iraqi debt forgiveness by France, Germany and Libya -- should have
been used to initiate changes in an occupation policy under severe attack
from even mainstream U.S. political leaders. But distressingly, Saddam's
capture chilled still further the debate as to how to terminate an occupation
that has undermined this country's standing worldwide, as well as its
own and numerous other nations' security.

With the insurgency now in its ninth month and showing
little signs of being snuffed out, the only feasible solution to this
crisis must at its core have a political rather a military dynamic. The
insurgency has condemned most Iraqis to a life of unprecedented insecurity,
as well as financial and social deprivations that far exceed the wrenching
impact of 13 years of punitive sanctions. In this environment, even a
small spark could bring chaos in Iraq, leave alone a major standoff with
Ayatollah Sistani.
(c) 2004, Global Viewpoint. Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.
For immediate release (Distributed 1/20/04)